On the Loose (18 page)

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

Campos Plantation, Morazán Province, El Salvador

Dawn was not Campos's favorite time of day. For his money, dawn could have been done away with completely, and days would start about tennish or so, after coffee and pastries and sex, a civilized hour, with civilized pastimes, for a civilized life.

Dawn was the hour of barbarians. Literally.

All he had to do was look out his second-floor bedroom window at his front gate to prove it. Diego Garcia had arrived for their meeting, far, far too early, and in far, far too great force.

Garcia had brought half of his whole damn army, half of the CNL soldiers in Morazán. The contingencies of his job aside, Campos tended to follow the party line when it came to the politics of Central America, and his party, the United States government party, was in support of the Salvadoran government, not the ragtag band of rebels blowing up coffee plantations, rallying landless villagers behind a populist front, and, in some part at least, creating a cover for a lucrative, if not yet world-class, drug trafficking business.

After three years of unqualified support, the Catholic Church had changed course and thrown in with the government as well—except for the three
religiosas
standing at the gate with Diego Garcia.

Sister Teresa, and Campos used the term lightly, looked very much the worse for wear. Her
vestimentas de monja
had been taken from her, and Garcia had put her in a modest skirt and peasant blouse accessorized with a hefty length of rope. Her wrists were loosely bound, a statement, Campos supposed, if not exactly a restraint, and her hair had been chopped off.

Campos was not shocked at the sight. He'd watched the styling session on Lily Robbins's tape last night, seen the tears and recriminations and the beating. It could have been worse. Teresa was standing and walking unaided.

She wasn't dead, and for her crime, death was not uncommon. Her young lover had certainly paid the ultimate price. Campos had watched his death as well and been deeply disturbed by all of it, the act itself, the location—Garcia had gunned him down in the chapel for God's sake—and the reason behind the rage, an unfaithful woman. The CNL captain was out of control, a true murdering bastard who needed to be dealt with, before he ran amok over the whole damn province.

So, of course, Campos would be giving the guy light anti-tank weapons this morning. Some days, in his dictionary, the words “irony” and “insanity” were listed as synonyms for “politics.”

Today was one of those days.

Of the other nuns, Sister Rose, despite her youth, had visibly taken up the mantle of Bettine's authority. Even in the company of thugs, she exuded an air of calm control, as if she knew, truly, that God was on her side.

Campos didn't doubt it for a second.

No less could be said of Sister Julia. She was undaunted. But the thing with Julia, the odd thing he never failed to notice and be somewhat unnerved by, was her aura.

Yes, the woman had one, and it was golden, as pure as sunlight on a clear day.

He'd grown up on the streets of America, stealing and cheating, lying and scamming, and skating the edge of felonies, until he'd skated over the edge. He'd stolen enough cars by the time he was sixteen to do a little real estate investment on the side. His life had included a few years cruising through the seamy underbellies of the world, and yeah, that was as bad as it sounded. To his credit, he'd done some good in those underbellies, such as it was, considering nothing he'd ever done had changed the course of anything for too damn long. The world, it seemed, was on a constant, inevitable, gravity-enabled slide into anarchy and vice.

And then for no reason, against the odds, there would be a woman like Julia Ann-Marie Bakkert somewhere, and of course, she would be a nun.

Campos didn't know why Garcia had brought the good sisters of St. Joseph with him at this hour, but Sister Julia and Sister Rose weren't who he was worried about this morning. He wasn't even particularly worried about Sister Teresa.

He looked down at the letter Max had handed him a few minutes ago. The script was blockish and straight on the page, the prose wordy, the phrases couched in false praise and subtle threats. Regardless, the damn thing boiled down to a single barbaric command: Give up the woman.

Give up the woman. Jesus
. Who in the hell did Diego Garcia think he was?

This morning's meeting had been set up for one reason: an exchange of weapons and money for a courier's pouch with its documents intact. There was no “give up the woman” part.

Of course, there was no money, either.

Goddammit.

To their credit, even in torrential rain, last night's patrol had located the downed Cessna and had set up a perimeter around it. No one was getting near the plane, what was left of it anyway, except the missing hotshot team of Rydell and York-Lytton.

Campos had planned on sending another patrol out this morning to find them, but from the looks of the small army camped on his doorstep, he needed all his men for security.

Because he sure as hell wasn't giving up Lily Robbins.

Rather than housing her in one of his elegant guest suites, he'd had Isidora keep Ms. Robbins with her and her children in the servants' quarters. Isidora's rooms were fairly elegant in and of themselves, and Campos had figured a school-teacher from Albuquerque would be more comfortable surrounded by another woman and a passel of kids.

According to Isidora's latest report, he'd been right. Ms. Robbins was still asleep.

Just as well.

He handed the letter back to Max, and straightened the knot on his tie.

His leg hurt like hell.

“Jake?”

“Yes?”

“Who has the high ground this morning?”

“We do. Pablo and Tomás are on the rooftops, Pablo on my frequency, and Tomás as your dedicated shooter.”

“Good.” Both men were expert marksmen. “How many men do you have in place in the warehouse?”

The pallet of weapons wasn't going anywhere, until Campos had the Agency's documents in his hand. Entering into negotiations without the money might have been an insurmountable problem for someone else—for anyone else. Campos had it covered.

“Five guards.”

“Where in the hell are Rydell and York-Lytton?”

“We're still trying to raise them on the radio or Rydell's secure phone.”

Campos swore under his breath and shrugged into the suit jacket Max was holding for him.

Fucking dawn
. The sun had barely broken the horizon, and he was already in Armani.

He had a feeling if anything happened to the two Americans, he was going to get the heat for it.
Dammit
.

“Try again, and keep trying, until we find them. Call Dobbs in Panama. Maybe he knows where in the hell they got off to.”

That was the problem with fast-breaking incidents and rushed missions. Things got misplaced—like two million dollars, two full-grown people, and a whole goddamn Land Cruiser.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO

Morazán Province, El Salvador

Two things woke Smith from a sound sleep: the erection he'd gotten rubbing up against something so soft and silky and warm, it could only be Honey; and the ringing of his phone. Both of them demanded immediate attention. One was going to get it.

Dammit.

He rolled onto his back and grabbed his phone.

Reception was a wonderful thing.

Right, dammit.

“Smith,” he said, reaching over Honey for the radio sticking out of one of the side pockets on his rucksack. “Yes, sir...stand by one.”

He leaned over her again, digging deeper into the rucksack's side pocket and pulling out his GPS. He switched it on and reported his location to William Dobbs in Panama.

“Yes, sir. I'll change frequencies and make the call. Yes, sir...rain...biblical rain...yes”—he did a quick visual check of the Land Cruiser and located the briefcase next to the case holding his Heckler & Koch submachine gun—“...sir. We've got the briefcase...yes, sir.”

Dobbs went on a bit of a harangue before he gave up the day's radio codes. Smith didn't blame him. Getting lost was pretty damn unacceptable, especially for an operator of his caliber.

“Yes, sir. I'll make the call,” he said, and hung up the cell phone.

Swearing softly to himself, he punched the frequency and encryption key into the radio's numeric pad with one hand, while he shucked into his pants with the other, and hoped like hell that someone was manning the radio at Campos's plantation.

Someone would be, of course. Campos had a reputation for running a damn tight ship, but given how things had gone so far, Smith wasn't taking anything for granted.

God, the inside of the Land Cruiser was like a sauna, the windows completely fogged over, the humidity about a hundred and ten percent. The sun was up outside, but barely.

“Come on, baby. Up and at 'em.” He leaned down and bit Honey gently on the butt.

She let out a long sigh and rolled onto her back, stretching her arms above her head, one knee bending, so beautifully, gorgeously, so erotically naked—
fuck
. His gaze accidentally slid down the lush curves of her body. The girl was not skinny, not by any stretch of the imagination. What little there was of her had been put in all the right places—some very nice places.

Yeah. Right. Don't go there, Cougar, old boy.

And he wouldn't. He was a professional.

And yet his gaze drifted down to between her legs, soft brown curls, soft pale skin, and a sweet little bikini wax job making her oh-so-just-so.

Right.

Every cell in his body went on instant alert, and only one thing kept his pants on—duty.
Dammit.
Garcia was already at the Campos plantation, according to Dobbs, and the negotiations were about to begin, at dawn, of all the damn strange things. The weapons had been delivered last night, but whatever was in the briefcase was still in the briefcase, and it wasn't anywhere close to where it could be useful.

Smith didn't know Campos, except by reputation. The plantation owner had not been in residence the one other time Smith had been in Morazán Province. But on this job, they were on the same team, and Rydell was a team player. He hadn't needed Dobbs to tell him he needed to get his ass unlost and get to Campos's coffee farm.

“Whitewater,” he said into the radio. “Clothes, Honey. Get dressed.”

“Roger that, Whitewater,” a man's voice came back at him from over the radio. “Angel Falls fully clothed on this end.”

Shit.
He hadn't meant to transmit that last part.

“Smith here.”

“Jake. My friend said you'd be calling. Give me your coordinates, and I'll tell you where you went wrong.”

Smith checked his GPS again, before giving Jake his location.

The last thing he'd expected in return was for his contact to reply with a short laugh.

“Well, you've got a damn good sense of direction.”

“How so?”

“The road you're on links up with the one you were supposed to be on, in about five hundred meters. And you're only four kilometers due north of the Cessna.”

Sonuvabitch
. Smith leaned forward and wiped a section of window clean with his hand, and couldn't see a damn thing. The world was full of fog, inside and outside of the Land Cruiser.

“How far are we from you?”

“Half an hour tops.”

“What do you want me to do?” Smith's mission priority was the recovery of the flash drive, but with Garcia already at the plantation, adjustments might need to be made in order to accommodate the whole operation. If Campos needed the briefcase, then the briefcase needed to be delivered.

“Give me five minutes. I'll call back.”

“Copy that.” Smith stuck the radio in the cargo pocket on his pants. “Come on, Honey. Let's go.”

“Go where?” she mumbled, rolling back onto her stomach and settling in again.

He dug his T-shirt out from underneath her and pulled it on over his head. Boots and socks came next. He found hers while he was at it and set them next to her.

“Coffee in two minutes,” he said, grabbing an MRE bag out of his rucksack. “Then we're moving out of here, babe. You can do it either dressed or naked. I vote for naked, but it's your call.”

“Jerk,” she whispered, and he grinned, before kissing her ass one more time.

Opening one of the back doors, he crawled out of the Land Cruiser and into the day. In the few minutes since he'd woken up, the sun had climbed higher into the sky and was already starting to burn off the fog.

He held up his GPS, then looked to the south. He didn't expect to see the plane. He wanted to see the country. It was steep and hilly, and definitely subalpine, not tropical forest, like closer to the coast.

By the time Honey joined him, looking rumpled and grumpy, he had two cups of a thick rich brew ready—coffee, heavy on the creamer, cocoa, and sugar: breakfast in a cup.

“Nice green shirt,” he said, noticing she'd gotten something clean out of her suitcase. She'd also secured her handcuffs to her belt loop, which he thought was damn cute.

“It's not green,” she grumbled.

Could have fooled him.

“It's chartreuse.”

Of course it was, and now he knew.

“You need to tie those boots, or you're going to end up on your butt, Ms. Chartreuse.”

She said something crude, which made him grin, and then she knelt down and tied her boots. She was all wild hair again this morning, the same way she'd been the last time they'd spent the night together, and he had to wonder if it was always like this with her—going to bed with a sophisticated, elegantly chic woman of the world, and waking up with Sheena of the Jungle.

Depending on how tired he was and how awake he needed to be, sometimes he dropped extra caffeine tabs in his cup. He'd had a few cups of coffee that, sipped slow and steady, had kept him going for a couple of days.

From the looks of her, she could use a little help.

“Do you want a caffeine tablet or two in your coffee, something to kind of get you going?”
And maybe get your eyes open, sweetheart?

“No,” she grumbled. “Regular caffeine is plenty. I usually drink decaf.”

Cigars, bourbon, and decaf coffee? So much for her hard-hitting edge.

She took the cup, when he offered it, and walked around toward the front of the Land Cruiser.

“You owe me for saving your ass,” she said, and he looked over to where she was standing by the front bumper, looking down the mountain.

“And what would my ass be worth this morning?” he asked.

“How about a hundred bucks?”

He rose from where he'd been kneeling by the small stove he'd set up, and walked to the front of the Land Cruiser.

Then he reached in his pocket and thumbed off two fifty-dollar bills and stashed them in the front pocket of her pants.

“Close call,” he said.

“Damn close,” she agreed, and took another sip of coffee.

The right front tire was hanging by a thread on the edge of the road, a whole lot of which had been washed away. A virtual stream of dirt and road base cascaded down the mountainside.

“Maybe we should move the car,” she suggested.

“Yeah.” Not a bad idea.

“I'm going to wait over there,” she said, pointing to the other side of the road, the one still firmly attached to the mountain.

“Good idea.” They had spent the night parked in a deep curve, with the mountain track bowing out at each end. In daylight, it was easy to see why so much rain had been funneled on top of them, and why they'd lost their communication reception.

To his credit, he'd been absolutely right about the fifty meters. If they'd driven out of the curve, without going over the side, she could have called her mother in Adams-Morgan, the reception would have been so good.

Of course, odds were that they would have gone straight over the side, and careened just that much closer to the Cessna.

Hell. Considering all the rocking and rolling they'd done in the back of the Land Cruiser, they were lucky to be alive this morning.

Geezus.
That was not the sort of obit he wanted at the end of his résumé, or hers.

By the time he got the car repositioned farther down the road, the call came back in. He pulled the map out of the driver's side visor and spread it open on the console. With a pencil in hand, he jotted down the coordinates for the Cessna and got the go-ahead from Campos, via Jake, to retrieve the flash drive, before driving on to the plantation.

“We have a patrol in place at the crash site,” Jake said. “They've been there all night, and have a perimeter set up. I'll let them know you're on your way. From where you're at, you need to follow the road east for another kilometer. There'll be a trail crossing, and from there, you're on a footpath, but it's only about three and a half kilometers to the plane, with a little bushwhacking at the end. Our men will be looking for you.”